Painting exhibition challenges porn bill

Wasti Atmodjo ,  Contributor ,  Denpasar   |  Wed, 10/15/2008 10:38 AM  |  Bali

Sixteen young Balinese painters, working together under the Commercial Arts Workers (PSK) banner, held a painting exhibition called "Barak Senggama" (Sex barracks) in an aesthetic counterargument to the heavily debated anti-pornography bill.

The exhibition displayed paintings which depict sexual activities among animals -- fish, flies, frogs, grasshoppers, pigs and rabbits -- with styles ranging from realistic depictions to abstract paintings.

Sukmawati Soekarnoputri, former president Megawati Soekarnoputri's sister, opened the exhibition at the Indonesian Journalists Association building in Denpasar on Monday evening. The paintings will be on exhibit until Friday.

"It would be a real shame if paintings like these were to get bulldozed because of the pornography bill," Sukmawati said.

"So I ask everyone in the community, including those in the artistic community, to join the fight against this bill."

Sukmawati said she would continue to work against the bill in Jakarta along with several other political figures.

Hunted by Boars by Made Agus Suwesnawa, depicts several boars basking in the pleasures of a sexual orgy.

Battle Grasshopper by Nyoman Tarka, shows two grasshoppers intertwining; Made Agusman paints a romantic meet-up between two dogs, male and female.

High-Class Imagination by I Ketut Jesna Winaya shows a man's head filled with sexual imaginings involving beetles, bees, dragonflies, grasshoppers and other insects.

The Frog painting by Made Adis Suardana shows two male frogs fighting over a female. The painting impressed Sukmawati so much she bought it for her private collection.

Ngurah Karyadi, member of the event's organizing committee, said the choice to show animals as the main objects of desire in the paintings had more to do with the painters' wishes to exercise more freedom in expressing sexual activities.

He said only animals remained untarnished in their instincts to have sex, allowing them to feel free to have sex in public places.

"All these activities are just natural, there's no category, nor is anyone trying to categorize these acts.

"Unlike humans, who try to keep things in boxes like what the pornography bill is trying to do," he said.

When asked how one should interpret the paintings, he answered, "that depends on each individual whether they want to see it as something pornographic or something natural".

He said people's sexual desires were part of their animal instincts, and that reality too often clashed with what the body wants.

"Thus, life becomes an exercise in theatrics, full of pretentious and custom-wrapped behaviors, as people try to stay within the confines of morality," he said.

Suwesnawa said his Hunter by Boars work expressed how suspicious the world's existing forces have become towards animal instincts, and how humans have assumed to connect such instincts with the demise of faith and values.

Such forces, he said, have reached a point where other people and the state have taken away the basic human right to express desire and libido.

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